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March 23, 2005 - Wednesday, 7:54 a.m.

I ran to Home Depot yesterday for lunch. Geez� I love that store. I can just see myself as a little old lady wandering through the aisles. The �lumber� aisle smells wonderful, and will forever make me think of my father. I looked at the carpeting and picked up some paint for the basement. What I REALLY wanted to do was just wander through the garden center for an hour or so, but I skipped it. I needed to get back to work. Some woman love to shop for clothes and can spend DAYS at the Mall� not me. I am in and out of those types of stores as quickly as possible. However, let me wander into a building materials store and I could get lost there for an entire afternoon.

I don�t remember a time when there wasn�t some major remodel or building project going on at home. Our first home, bought shortly after I was born, was a new house. My father spent time getting the yard going. We started with just dirt, and by the time we moved away four years later he�d planted shrubs, trees, grass and a garden. Our second home was built in the 1930�s. It was an adorable cape cod. I don�t think there was a �square� or level corner or wall in the place, a definite challenge for remodeling and wallpapering. And that is precisely what my parents did. My dad completely remodeled the kitchen about the first year we were there. Tore out walls, completely changed it. Mom painted and put up wallpaper. Eventually he tore down the garage and built a brand new free standing one (from a one car to a two car). He had someone come in with a backhoe and dug a �basement� in the area where the garage once was and made a basement and main floor addition to the house, two new bedrooms. We barely got that done, when we sold the house and moved to Colorado. We�d barely been in our Colorado home 2 years when he started working on it. The home, a beautiful, one level, �Better Homes & Gardens� home was built in the 1960�s. It had an amazing amount of square foot of living area; however there were only 3 bedrooms, two of which were VERY small. There were 5 of us girls and my parents. His first project was to convert the garage into living space, a family room, bedroom and workshop and then add on a garage to replace the one he�d converted. He did that my senior year in high school. He went on to remodel the kitchen and convert the area between the house and �old� garage where a breezeway connected the two into an atrium with a hot tub. Gorgeous!! The smell of sawdust and fresh cut wood permeates my memories. There isn�t any smell quite as sweet as that, unless it is the smell of brewing coffee. Though I hate the taste and never drink the stuff, it�s another smell from my childhood. Sometimes I make a pot of coffee just to smell it in the house. :o) My childhood was sweet � and those two smells will bring it back to me until the day I die.

Last night I managed to get my income taxes done and filed electronically before I went to church with L. I�ve got it slated for direct deposit. What did we do before the internet?! I love doing my taxes online. It�s made the process MUCH more pain-free. I am not sure why I waited until the END of March. I have a return coming!! I need to get my FAFSA done. Blech! Need to do that in the next couple of days. I need to do laundry, gonna run out of stuff I want to wear shortly.

I ate WAY too much yesterday, and far too much of the WRONG stuff. Gah!! Need to back off considerably, am getting tired of getting sick. I bought a book at �Barnes & Noble� the other night. Wish I could just sit down and read it!! I HAVE to drag out the management reading assignments, perhaps tonight, and read IT first. I picked up a 5 gallon bucket of Primer yesterday for the basement. THAT is what I need to work on tonight� also I HAVE to finished patching the floor in the main room. Still hoping I can find some time to clear the flower beds in the front yard. I really would like to lay down some concrete along side the driveway. We park there, and it would look SOOoo much nicer paved. I�ll need to dig down some if I am going to pour concrete. I still want to put rock down between the sidewalk and the street. Wonder if I�ll get time to get that done this summer? I�ve asked Justin to get the wheelbarrow fixed. Hate to think about digging up and carting away dirt, but going to have to entertain it if I hope to get the yard finished the way I want it to look.

My �schedule� has gone to hell. ::sighs:: My discipline... well... it sucks! I think 5 am was just TOO early to get up. I need to really focus on getting up at 5:30 instead. It really sucks to want to get up early AND enjoy staying up late, especially when napping just isn�t an option.

Last night after I posted my entry here I spent about a half hour checking all my graphics on my postings. The crash of Diaryland�s server left me with some missing graphics. Fortunately I still had almost all of the files and simply replaced them and the links were all re-established. I HAVE GOT to go to work.

Later gator. M.